Rehearsal: Notes for a Future Project—Michele Chu, Florence Lam, and Monique Yim

Name: Rehearsal: Notes for a Future Project—Michele Chu, Florence Lam, and Monique Yim
Start: 2024-08-07T16:00:00+08:00
End: 2024-08-07T20:00:00+08:00
Location: 10B, Wing Wah Industrial Building

Date: Aug 7, 2024
Time: 4:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Venue

10B, Wing Wah Industrial Building

Quarry Bay, Hong Kong

Photo｜攝影：Studio Lights On

Artists Michele Chu, Florence Lam, Monique Yim will host an open house, ‘Rehearsal: Notes for a Future Project’, as part of their research residency at Para Site’s tenth-floor annex. The event features work-in-progress materials shared by the artists and a range of participatory happenings. Visitors are invited to drop by at any time during the open house to engage in a creative exchange with the artists, with all contributions anonymously documented to inspire the artists’ upcoming project at Para Site.

Since July 2024, the three artists have been conducting field research in and around the space in preparation for an upcoming exhibition curated by Assistant Curator Jessie Kwok. Through dialogues between a site-specific installation and performances that will gradually unfold, the exhibition will unpack and reframe the role of the host — whether of a body, a relationship, a home, or a place.

Audience participation is a key component of this project, developing a unique form of collaboration with the artists. During ‘Rehearsal’, Michele Chu will adopt her notion of gastronomic grieving with visitors, using tools and writing to explore the associations between emotions, memories, tastes and textures. Florence Lam invites people of all genders and ages to share their personal stories and reflections on the topic of fertility, which will be logged as voice recordings. Monique Yim will create a series of instruction-based performances that invite visitors to enact individually or collectively, performing actions that reflect on the dynamic relationships between body, space, self, and others.

About the artists

Michele Chu

Michele Chu in her practice explores intimacy and human connection, specifically the interplay between sensory elements and space to amplify emotional connection between individuals. Her works contemplate what makes us human, through mediums like performances, sculptures, multi-sensory installations and public interventions amongst others.

Her work has been shown at 1a Space (Hong Kong); Negative Space (Hong Kong); and Tai Kwun Contemporary (Hong Kong). Her debut solo exhibition at PHD Group, ‘you, trickling’, was featured in The New York Times, Artforum, ArtReview Asia, Frieze, Ocula, and other publications.

She is a recipient of Soundpocket’s Artist Support Program from 2020-21 and was in residence at London’s Delfina Foundation as part of their ‘Performance as Process’ program in 2023.

Florence Lam

Artist, curator, educator, with performance art as the main medium. She grew up in Hong Kong, obtained her MA Fine Art from Iceland Academy of the Arts in 2017 and her BA Fine Art from Central Saint Martins in 2014. She is the co-founder of Per.Platform, Hong Kong-based live art platform founded in 2021. Lam has performed around Asia and Europe, including M+ (Hong Kong 2023), IMPORT/EXPORT (Livorno, Italy 2023), Black Market International – Exploring 2021 (Frankfurt, Germany 2021), ZABIH Performance Festival (Lviv, Ukraine 2019), Reykjavík Arts Festival (Iceland 2018), Performance Platform Lublin (Lublin, Poland 2017) and Manifesta (Zürich, Switzerland 2016) etc. She worked as a re-performer and workshop facilitator for Marina Abramović in 2018-2019.

Monique Yim

Monique Yim (B.1984, Hong Kong) is an artist, educator and mental health professional as certified hypnotherapist, contemplative gestalt therapist, mindfulness and expressive arts facilitator who received MA from Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, UK and studied postgraduate programmes at Zurich University of the Arts, Switzerland.

Yim mainly engages with performance, photography, video, mixed media installation, participatory art, public and community art, also film and theatre. Her works concern human conditions such as social, cultural, identity, body, gender and queer issues, as well as marginalized minorities and wellbeing. Since 2006, she has been featured in over 200 exhibitions, festivals and residencies in over 30 cities across Asia, Europe and Americas. She was awarded international and local awards including the ‘Visual Art Performance Made in Public Space’ prize at Kassak Centre, Europe (2018), the ‘Hong Kong Human Rights Arts Prize’ shortlist (2021) and the ‘Colours of Humanity Arts Prize’ shortlist (2022 and 2023), Hong Kong. She curated “Performance Art Marathon” in West Kowloon Cultural District, Hong Kong (2014).

Yim has been a consultant, lecturer, workshop instructor, talk and research conference speaker, and professional trainer at over 100 overseas and local universities, schools, arts and cultural, social services and healthcare institutions, diverse events and community projects. She has been dedicated to performance art education and pioneered in interdisciplinary practice and teaching of performance art in Hong Kong, eg. cross media art, creative education, cultural and gender studies, general education, life education, mindfulness, expressive arts therapy, psychology and psychotherapy, cognitive science, philosophy, wellness and healing.

Yim’s practice and works have always been collected, cited in academic text, and selected as research or teaching materials worldwide.